7 Tips to Take Circle Parental Controls to the Next Level
Set up Circle to customize for your family. Check out these seven tips to take Circle’s Parental Controls to the next level with your family.
If you’ve paired devices and set some limits for your family members, you’re already starting to find balance with Circle. But, you might not be aware of some of Circle's best screen time management features. Check out these seven tips to take Circle to the next level with your family.
Schedule offline time with your family.
Create a Focus Time to block out an offline moment for play, homework, dinner, movie night, or any other unplugged time that you want to create for your family. You can even set only certain sites to be allowed during that time period.
Browse confidently with SafeSearch.
With the flip of a switch, you can enable SafeSearch for both Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo. The SafeSearch toggle is at the top of the Filter screen. Any device assigned to that Profile will only see content approved through these search engines.
Seeing some good behavior? Send a screen time Reward.
Limits can be flexible with Circle’s Rewards feature. Extend a Time Limit, give a later Bedtime, or cancel a Focus Time just for the current day. You can edit a Reward after you send it if you want to make any changes.
Keep up with your family's location.
Circle can keep tabs on the location of your family's iOS and Android devices, so you can enjoy peace of mind while your kids go about their day. Just tap "Locate” from any Circle Profile where you’ve assigned a device. As a friendly reminder: Circle can only locate iOS and Android devices with the Circle App installed and “Set up as a Kid” device. Also, notifications must be enabled on both the Parent and Kid apps in order to use the Location feature.
Keep prying eyes (and hands) out of your Circle App.
Create a unique lock pin for your Circle parental controls settings by opening the Circle Settings screen and tapping "Lock Code." This way, every time you launch the app on your phone, you’ll need to enter a unique passcode (or thumbprint) to get in.
Unmanaged Filters, devices, and Profiles.
Do you have devices in your family that need constant Internet access? Give any device untracked and unlimited access to the web by assigning it as Unmanaged, or setting a Profile to the "None" Filter Level.
You can also set an App or Category to “Unmanaged” from the Filter screen. When you do that, any content from that source will bypass your Focus Times and Bedtimes set for the Profile.
Fine tune Circle's Filter with custom sites.
If you want to use a specific Filter setting for an individual site, create a Custom Filter and set it to Allowed, Not Allowed, or Unmanaged. To get started, open the Filter and tap the "Custom Sites" tab across the top of the screen.
For more helpful tips, check out the Circle Parental Controls and Circle Home Plus user guide.